TORONTO - Ontario's Catholic schools can't opt out of a revamped sex ed curriculum even if it goes against their religious beliefs to teach kids about masturbation and homosexuality, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday.

Several conservative and religious groups claim the changes coming this fall will corrupt young minds with "explicit" topics like anal sex. But Ontario's Catholic premier made it clear that all public schools must teach the lessons that will start as early as age six.

The first changes to Ontario's curriculum in a dozen years will see students learning about masturbation in Grade 6 and oral and anal sex at age 12.

Opponents who are mounting a campaign to get rid of the program have described the curriculum as "evil" and "bordering on criminal." They say teaching eight-year-olds about gender identity and same-sex marriage is inappropriate and should be left up to parents.

But McGuinty - whose wife is a Catholic school teacher - said it's a responsible way to teach kids about sex in an age where it's easy to access information, whether it's from their friends or the Internet. He argues that by including it in the curriculum, the government has some control over the information and can present it in an appropriate way.

Under the changes that were quietly released in January, Grade 1 kids will be taught to identify genitalia - among other body parts - using the correct word, such as penis, vagina and testicle. The 1998 curriculum made no mention of genitalia.

Grade 3 lessons about the differences that make each person unique will now also include discussion about same-sex families and students with special needs to "reflect the government commitment to equity and inclusive education," according to provincial officials.

“We do expect that schools will work with parents, and if parents would say that there is part of the curriculum that they do not want their child to receive, then they have the right to make that choice and work with the classroom teacher to accommodate that,” she said.

Constitutionally they can’t do that, and the Catholic schools cannot remove themselves without an amendment to the constitution. I know thi is different from how the US works, but that’s the case in Ontario.

It was part of the compromise in Canada that the minority school received public funding, the protestant schools eventually became the public school system, and Quebec secularised theirs some time ago.

The issue isn’t vouchers, but more of a freedom of religion issue. That being said, there are private Catholic schools that operate without government funding in Ontario.

“expect that schools” - yeah, how long will that last and believe me, even having to deal with lesbian principals who hate real boys here in the states, is not fun and unbearably stressful for the children.

They tried to tell me my kids had to learn this in the US(’Catholic school’)also. I told them to go to hell and put my kids in the library for the hour once a week. Told the pricipal he was ‘nuts’ and he wasn’t going to teach my kids porno. I told him that teaching them the Rosary might be a better idea. They told me that “kids need to know this these days”. Yeah right.

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